Graphic designers routinely create document files in CMYK or spot color. In order to render these image files correctly on a document reproduction device, it is often necessary to determine the precise color that the document's designer intended. There would be no confusion of the designer's intent if the image files were created in device-independent color spaces such as L*a*b*. But that is almost never done. Designers typically adjust colors of their graphic art and content objects contained within their documents until the images displayed on their monitor have the precise colors the designer wants their customers to see. The resulting CMYK or spot color data contained in the document's associated files does not accurately describe the designer intended color due to various reasons, including the algorithms used by the application software and device monitors having non-standard responses.
In response to a customer's inquiry about inaccurate printer color rendition of a vector graphic document containing a large background area described by Pantone® PMS colors and tints, it was determined that the printer was rendering the Pantone colors relatively accurately, but the rendered colors were not the exact colors which the designer saw on their monitor when they created that document. The problem actually becomes worse when the document designer incorporates various Pantone blends and sweeps of Pantone colors, which is rather common in packaging applications which use spot colors like process colors with blends and sweeps occurring between spot colors. Presently, there is no well-defined method for determining what the precise color was that the designer intended by their respective color call-outs as there are presently no standards for inferring what the L*a*b* color is when Pantone colors are blended and used like process colors. Real life cases abound where the DFE cannot correctly decipher the designer intended colors. As a consequence, the resulting color errors seen in the document print are wrongly attributed to a short-coming of the print device.
Accordingly, what is needed in this art is a system and method for determining designer intended colors contained within a document displayed on a monitor device so that the print device being used to render the designer's document has an accurate color rendition target.